NewsChina Testing Green Dam for Mac OSX and Still Pushing Ahead Despite Security Warnings
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:25:26 PM by Justin Kerr
Despite recently announced delays in China’s requirement to include Green Dam anti-pornography software on new PCs, the initiative is far from dead. PC makers who unanimously decried the hasty July 1st deadline managed to buy themselves an extension, but are still being told they to comply with the new requirements. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology re-affirmed its commitment to Green Dam Youth Escort on Thursday, and claims that it sees the software as being an important tool for protecting young people from pornography and violence on the internet. To further reinforce its commitment to total penetration, software publisher Jinhui has been told to write a Mac OSX version of the software, and it is currently in beta testing.
Critics of the Green Dam filtering software continue to question the motivation behind the initiative, and have accused the Ministry of using the software to further political repression. This may be a valid concern when you consider that the Ministry in charge of Green Dam’s implantation is also responsible for suppressing illegal political activity. The situation for the Chinese gets even worse when you consider that several industry tests have shown multiple security vulnerabilities in the filtering software, and it even appears to have a high occurrence of false positives in the filtering algorithm. The vulnerabilities are considered so serious in fact, that Sony is including a disclaimer with all new PCs.
Will Linux be the only safe haven for the Chinese?
NewsTim Schafer: Brutal Legend Skipping PC “Right Now”
Posted 07/04/09 at 01:07:37 AM by Nathan Grayson
Sometimes, crying is ok – like when a loved one dies or it’s your party. Bawling like a little girl, though? Well, that’s only permitted when Tim Schafer’s involved. Typically, of course, Mr. Schafer’s games turn on the waterworks by sending players into fits of laughter thunderous enough to awake even your newly deceased loved one. But now, he’s finally got us blubbering out of sincere grief. Why? Because Brutal Legend is a console exclusive.
Eurogamer asked Schafer why he’d make such a glaring omission, to which he replied:
“Well it's really an action game, that when you play it you'll see that it was meant to be on a console."
However, all hope isn’t lost just yet. While a PC version may not be in development at the moment, Schafer neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of such a port in the future.
“We are really focused on the Xbox 360 and PS3 version right now,” he said.
Pray to the rock gods, people. It’s all we can do at this point. And if you think that’s sacrilege, well, look at it this way: The normal gods didn’t give you Brutal Legend on the PC. What have you got to lose?
NewsMozilla Plans 'BugDay' to Exterminate Bugs in Firefox 3.5
Posted 07/03/09 at 05:45:33 PM by Paul Lilly
After several delays and a lot of anticipation, Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 3.5, officially joining the next-generation of browser wars where heavy focus has been put on JavaScript performance. But is the new browser ready for prime-time?
Due to the number of complaints users have been posting -- ranging from longer load times to intermittent crashes believed to be a result of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine -- Mozilla has issued a community "BugDay" set for July 7 to stomp out the bugs.
"We will try to narry down any important bugs that were missed, or were regressions from Firefox 3.5, and get them into a point update quickly," reads a post on quality.mozilla.org.
Some 55 known bugs exist in the latest release, some of which will be addressed in Firefox 3.5.1 expected to be released by the end of the month.
NewsRumor: Nvidia Ion 2 to Supercharge Graphics with Twice the Shaders of Ion 1
Posted 07/03/09 at 05:30:32 PM by Paul Lilly
Nvidia isn't saying much about its next Ion platform, but if recent rumors turn out to be true, the followup platform looks to be a doozie. According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, Nvidia will double up the number of shaders on the second generation of Ion.
That means Ion 2, as it will likely be called, would ship with at least 32 shaders, providing a big boost to gaming performance on netbooks and nettops built around the platform. And best of all, thermals aren't expected to rise very much, if at all, on the upcoming shrunken version of Ion.
Nvidia's first Ion has yet to really penetrate the market and cut into Intel's Atom platform marketshare, but that could change as more major manufacturers jump on board. Samsung recently announced plans to launch an Ion netbook this month, and Lenovo's Ion-based IdeaPad S12 is due out in August.
Nevertheless, Fudzilla says Ion 2 should launch by the end of this year.
NewsMicrosoft Will Offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium
Posted 07/03/09 at 05:29:22 PM by Andy Salisbury
Until now, it was assumed that Microsoft would only sell single license versions of Windows 7. But, thanks to a recent discovery in the latest license agreement, there’s some evidence suggesting otherwise.
In section two, there’s a new clause that clearly details a family pack, which will allow you to “install one copy of the software marked as ‘Family Pack’ on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there.” Which, for those keeping score, would finally let them combat Apple in this particular field.
Still, there’s no official word from Microsoft on pricing or availability, or if this is even true.
NewsSymantec Releases Public Beta of Norton Internet Security 2010 and AntiVirus 2010
Posted 07/03/09 at 05:19:54 PM by Paul Lilly
Many of our readers were taken off-guard when we rated Norton Internet Security 2009 a 9/Kickass in last year's antivirus roundup, and we even admit to being surprised at Norton's transformation from a resource-heavy sloth to a lean and competent antimalware package. We hope the trend continues, and we'll have a chance to see if it does now that Symatec has released beta versions of its upcoming 2010 releases to the public.
The new version features a new protection model codenamed Quorum and will put a heavier focus on reputation-based malware detection. While it won't replace existing signature-based detection for known threats, Norton says the reputation model can detect zero-day malware that's never been seen before.
"Our new approach changes the rules by both enhancing traditional security techniques to make them more aggressvie and by making it dramatically more difficult for attackers to evade detection by simply changing their malware," said Rowan Trollope, Symantec senior vice president, Consumer Business Unit.
Other features include an overhaul to parental control and spam filtering, more detailed information provided by Norton Insight, which identifies known good programs for faster scanning, and a new feature called Autopsy, which is designed to help the user understand what just happened when Norton automatically removes an infection.
Norton Internet Security 2010 Beta
Norton Antivirus 2010 Beta
Had a chance to try either one of these out? Hit the jump and let us know about it!
NewsA-DATA's New USB Flash Drives Swivel and Lock
Posted 07/03/09 at 05:05:33 PM by Paul Lilly
A-DATA today unveiled a new line of colorful USB flash drives with a swivel design case the company claims will keep the USB connector free from harm.
"Unlike conventional swivel-designed USB flash drives, the unique asymmetric outer casing of C903 protects the USB connector and serves as a lock mechanism to prevent the connector from sticking out due to constant turning and wearing," A-DATA stated in a press release. "The same design enables users to turn and store the USB connector properly in place with much of an ease."
The case comes constructed with a glossy metallic finish wrapped around either a bright red or blue USB stick, with initial capacities available up to 32GB.
No word yet on price or availability.
NewsBing Gets Desperate and Adds Twitter Messages to Search Results
Posted 07/03/09 at 04:41:22 PM by Andy Salisbury
In what appears to be a desperate dig for traffic, Bing has decided to add Twitter messages to their search results in an attempt to take some market share from Google.
“We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets. We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search,” wrote Microsoft search general manager Sean Sucher. These results will appear in a separate box alongside the normal search results within Bing.
Ultimately, it’s not too surprising to see Microsoft do this – considering how Google has already admitted defeat in the real-time information race with Twitter.
NewsUSB 3.0 Equipped PCs Will Be Shipping by End of the Year
Posted 07/03/09 at 02:58:29 PM by Pulkit Chandna
Taiwanese manufacturers might have positioned themselves to begin shipping SuperSpeed USB (aka USB 3.0) before the curtain falls on the year 2009, according to the July issue Nikkei Electronics Asia. The magazine believes that it was quite evident from the various prototypes on display at the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference held in Tokyo May 20-21, 2009 that the commercial rollout of the next-gen USB interface in PCs is nigh.
Japanese company NEC Electronics Corp shipped samples of the first USB 3.0 host controller in early June and expects to churn out a million every month beginning this September. The first devices based on the interface will most certainly be external hard disk drives, with more exciting applications like hd video streaming expected to follow later.
NewsArchos 9 PC Tablet Comes to the U.S.
Posted 07/03/09 at 10:09:02 AM by Paul Lilly
Already announced in Europe last month, Archos is bringing its new Archos 9 PC Tablet to the U.S. market. The ultraportable tablet weighs less than 22.29 ounces and measures just 0.63-inches thick.
On the hardware front, the Archos 9 boasts a full touch-sensitive 9-inch screen, an Intel Atom Z515 processor (1.2GHz, 512KB cache, 400MHz frontside bus), 1GB of RAM, up to 120GB of storage, 1.3MP webcam, and an optical track-point mouse.
On the software side of things, the new tablet will come pre-loaded with Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS. It will also include Microsoft Office and a host of other apps, such as "Web TV & Radio, video conference, antivirus, parental control, photos and movies edition applications, and more."
The Archos 9 PC Tablet will go on sale sometime this fall for an as yet undetermined price.
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